On March 5, 2008, a recently retired woman was driving on West 38th Avenue at Kendall Street in Wheat Ridge when a fleeing fugitive slammed into her pickup truck, going well over 80 mph.

The woman — who asked that she only be referred to as “Deanna” — doesn’t recall anything between the time of the impact until she woke up in an emergency room 50 minutes later.

But because of the injuries she received, she has constant pain, multiple doctor’s appointments, bills, is on many medications and suffers from what she describes as “a loss of energy.”

“The incident has cost me physically, emotionally, time and financially,” she said today as she addressed the man who ran into her, 24-year-old Justin K. Kautz.

“Quite frankly, this is not how I envisioned my retirement to be like, since the incident happened just eight months into it,” said Deanna.

Kautz was a man on the run in March 2008, prosecutor Don Nottingham told Jefferson County District Judge Jane Tidball today.

Seven months before, Kautz had walked away from a halfway house where he was placed to transition from prison to the community. He had been sentenced in July 2005 on multiple convictions, including aggravated motor-vehicle theft, menacing and vehicular eluding.

Police were on the lookout for Kautz because he was both a fugitive and suspected of other crimes since his escape.

When Kautz was spotted by police in a stolen Toyota Sequoia near Arvada City Hall, officers soon closed in.

But instead of stopping, said the prosecutor, Kautz aimed the giant SUV for one detective’s car and took off, the detective avoiding a collision by swerving at the last moment.

What ensued were some of the most dangerous actions he has ever seen by a defendant, said Nottingham. Officers pursuing the vehicle slowed down when they hit 85 mph and Kautz was pulling away from them.

On West 38th, Kautz was going at least 100 mph eastbound in the westbound lanes, said Nottingham.

After hitting Deanna at Kendall Street and West 38th Avenue, Kautz continued to the corner of West 38th Avenue and Jay Street in Wheat Ridge, where he veered off 38th through a parking lot. There, he crashed into an unoccupied SUV owned by Tawnya Mahoney.

Kautz jumped out of the Sequoia, leaving his badly injured and pregnant girlfriend, Cheri Hall, in the vehicle screaming in pain. Two hours later, a SWAT team captured him in a nearby apartment building.

Today, as he awaited sentencing, Kautz sat in the jury box waving and smiling at his child.

Hall told Tidball that despite what happened that day, “We love him so much, and we want him to come home.

“He is not an animal,” said Hall of Kautz. “I know that he wants to change. I love him very much.”

Deanna expressed some sympathy for Kautz, but the sympathy was about a wasted life.

“Mr. Kautz is a young man, and due to his own bad judgments will be missing out on some of the best years of his life, and that is a shame,” she said. “But when others have forgotten about him, I, unfortunately, will remember him because of emotional and physical pain.”

Kautz said he was sorry.

“I do want to apologize, and my heart goes out to (Deanna) and her family,” he said.

After the apology, the judge sentenced Kautz to 12 years for burglary, six years for aggravated motor-vehicle theft, six years for eluding — all to run concurrently.

The judge then sentenced him to eight years for escape, to run consecutively to the first three charges. The ultimate sentence: 20 years in prison.

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